Dare
by Unstoppable Cyborg
Summary: During a game of truth-or-dare, both Marinette and Adrien reflect upon their relationships and their lives. Miraculous LadyBug/Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Lady Noir/Adrienette. Oneshot. AU and OOC due to being written prior to show.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Miraculous LadyBug. Yes, I'm still calling it that. It's less clunky.  
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 **I decided to name Adrien's friend (the guy with the blue shirt who had his arm around Adrien's shoulders in the newest trailer) Marcel. In fact, this story is filled with personal headcanons.  
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Adrien couldn't believe he had allowed himself to be doing this. He and such foolish social games simply did not mix. They didn't mix before he had put his ring on, and they most certainly should not mix now that he was cursed. If it weren't for the fact that he wasn't transformed, he would have thought that he had been possessed by Plagg to have done something as idiotic as pick dare.

Alya's face split into a gleeful and slightly malicious grin that sent a shiver down the spines of the two luck-wielders. They were both near certain that she was not secretly possessed by an akuma and plotting their dooms, but the past months had made both of them wary. It was rare that they allowed themselves to relax, but it was the start of summer. They no longer had the stress of school. Some of the stress they had both been holding within them had waned away. They could only hope that it wasn't going to hurt them - back during the school year they had been like springs, tightly coiled and ready to let loose, ready to bounce back and retaliate at a moment's notice.

"I dare you," Alya said, pausing to add suspense and to grin even wider. "To carry Marinette to the edge of the pool and then throw her in! Head-first into the deep end, preferably." Marinette let go of a breath that she hadn't realized that she had been holding. Alya was the best friend she could ever hope for, but she could get a bit over-protective. She had considered telling her of her double-life as Ladybug to get her to stop worrying, but had decided against it because she'd worry even more. Besides, Tikki would get on her case about responsibility. Even worse, if Alya ever became possessed by an akuma, she'd have way too much of an edge to use upon her.

When Alya had singled out Adrien, Marinette had worried that he would be made to do something that would involve her romantically, such as to kiss her or to tell the entire group his reasons for rejecting her advances. Not that she would've minded for him to kiss her or tell her his reasons, but it would be an invasion of his privacy. She didn't want him to think that she was the type of person to get her friends to peck at people's emotions like murderous pigeons did at her body and the body of her partner. And even if he didn't think of her that way, she didn't want her potential boyfriend to have a bone to pick with her best friend. She didn't care if the game had escalated from its tame start, she didn't want him to feel uncomfortable around her. But no, it just being carried and tossed into the pool. Chat Noir would sometimes carry her, and it wasn't romantic, or at least she didn't think it was.

He didn't think it was romantic, either. Those occasions could have been romantic, but they weren't. Ladybug didn't let him carry her because she wanted their bodies to be pressed up against each other or for him to hold her, but rather because she was hurt, terrified, or had been caught off guard and he had just barely plucked her out of harm's way. They only could have been romantic if she had been looking at him with loving eyes rather than questioning, annoyed, or scared ones. The scared ones were horrible to see. He never wanted to be in one of those situations again; he knew that before this war was over they'd be in them many more times. In some ways her being terrified was the worst. Getting hurt was an inevitable part of being a hero, and she wasn't perfect. It was impossible, even with her good luck, for her to notice every possible danger. That was where he came in, to pick up whatever pieces she had missed. But her being terrified? It was more painful for him to see her like that than to be hit by a lightning bolt. When she would actually show her fear, she didn't just look scared, however. She looked broken. And most of the time, he couldn't tell if his attempted words of reassurement really just made her feel worse.

Adrien glanced at the girl he had been dared to throw. "Are you okay with this?" he asked her. He never wanted to hurt Marinette; that was why he forced himself to reject her. That, and the fact that he'd feel like he'd be cheating on Ladybug. But even if he didn't feel like he'd be cheating on his partner, he'd probably still reject Marinette and metaphorically stab knife into his heart to keep her safe from the curse. Ladybug was the only one who couldn't be hurt by his bad luck because she was blessed with good luck. Surely touching her enough to carry her would be enough for her to get hurt, even if it was just a strange sunburn or something. Besides, who the heck would indirectly throw their fully-clothed best friend into a pool? If the roles were reversed, he wouldn't have dared Alya to throw Marcel into the pool, even though he had been dared to take his shirt off and had done so. He didn't understand people sometimes. Not even he was impulsive enough to do something like that. Then again, Marcel didn't have any scars or bruises he'd have a hard time explaining.

Marinette nodded her approval, and the two of them awkwardly stood up. It got even more awkward as Adrien picked her up, especially for him as Plagg began to chortle from within the ring. He didn't realize that the kwami was laughing at how the one time she was willingly curling her legs around his torso and her arms around his shoulders, he was too shy to actually do anything other than walk to the edge of the pool with leaden legs. Neither of the two really noticed how familiar a situation this was; they were both focused on trivial details to see the big picture. Had they been more alert, they would have heard the more important fine details screaming at them.

Adrien began to silently curse at himself for not being more alert, for playing with one of her pigtails rather than focusing on the situation. This was why his parents were always so disapointed in him. This was why Ladybug more than likely saw him as more of a nuisance than a partner He tried so hard to maintain perfect focus and to be stoic rather than goofing around, but even with all the medication he took he had a hard time focusing and sitting still. He supposed that he had been unlucky even before he had put on the ring - it was surely unlucky to be ADHD and biromantic in a family like his. Perhaps he would have to be medicated this summer. His parents would probably enjoy that. As it was, he was pretty sure that the only reason that he went his summers unmedicated was to gain back the lost weight that came as a side effect of the Concerta. It caused a total loss of appetite in him, along with minor insomnia. Neither of those side effects were as much of a problem this year as most, though, since his work as a hero left him so exhausted and famished that he had managed to overcome them. He wasn't thinking of taking his medication this summer to please his parents, however, it was so he wouldn't lose focus and thus lose control of his powers as easily as he just did. After all, the moisture around the edges of the pool was only enough to make someone slip if he was a klutz or cursed. He began to think apologies to himself, trying to find which words would best apologize to her for falling on her. This was just the sort of thing he'd been afraid of.

She had felt him begin to fall as she had been noting that their heartbeats were syncing up, and she, too, let out a silent string of curses. Why didn't her luck work properly around him? Was it considered un-altruistic to try and grant good luck to the boy that she loved? For everyone else, simply being around her could increase their amount of good luck, but not him. To her, Chat Noir was almost like the twin brother she never had. Almost. His constant flirtation kept her from fully feeling this way, but aside from his flirting she loved him, loved him almost as much as she loved Adrien or her family. However, she couldn't give good luck to him. Him being unlucky was his entire being when it came to being a hero; she'd be losing him as a partner and quite possibly as a friend if she attempted to give him good luck. But that shouldn't be the case whom she was holding onto, the boy that was carrying her in a way that was surprisingly tender, a way that was almost familiar.

She considered it to be purely luck that when they fell in the pool together neither of them got hurt (she had been worried that he'd break his ankle or something), he considered it to be purely his reflexes and training kicking in at the last second possible. In actuality it was a mixture of both. The duo was slightly surprised that the water didn't tear them from the other's hold, but also knew that even if the other stopped holding on to them, they'd not let go. They'd never let go of the ones they loved, not when it mattered. The fact that the other didn't let go either was both comforting and concerning to them, although for different reasons. For her, it was that Adrien wanted to protect her, despite the odds, odds that if he learned the truth would, as far as she knew, would prove far too difficult and far too dangerous for him. For him, it was that perhaps Marinette didn't need to be protected as much as he thought she did and that she might follow him anywhere. As nice as it would be to have both of the girls he loved fighting by his side, he couldn't let Marinette face the monsters that he faced, monsters that sometimes had a human face, and even worse one of them had his face. He almost cringed at the thought of his clone that he still wasn't sure of how he had come into existence - Adrien was pretty sure the copycat identified as male, but he couldn't be sure. So far their conversations had been the copycat taunting him about how apparently he was superior and how the real Chat Noir was going to die and no one would even miss him.

When they surfaced, the two wanted nothing but to continue holding each other and to be able to stare into the other's eyes for an eternity. However, the guffaws at how he had managed to get the both of them thrown into the pool - more-or-less head-first, but not in a way that would have gotten them hurt - mixed with the are-you-okays from their friends spoiled the moment, and cut the eternity into a few seconds before they awkwardly looked away from each other, blushed, let go of each other, and climbed out of the pool.

Plagg's chortling had grown more intense as he asked his charge if he would dare Ladybug to kiss him were she available to do so. He tried to ignore the bad-luck kwami, but the question tried to gnaw at his mind. Would he? He decided that he wouldn't because it just wouldn't be right, and besides, he secretly wanted their first kiss - and his first kiss - to be one where they had just dually confessed their undying love for each other. It would also come after she had learned his identity, of course, so that he would know that she truly loved him for him, loved him as the shy, nerdy schoolboy and not just the flirtatious partner who didn't have a hard time talking to people. Had he been given the eternity that he had been wanted, that may have just happened.


End file.
